Police shoot suspect after Brooklyn chase

Police shot and critically wounded a 29-year-old ex-con early Friday after he fired at them with a 9 mm handgun in Brooklyn, officials said.

Dahan J. Sam remained in critical but stable condition late Friday after he was struck numerous times by shots fired by police after a brief street chase in Williamsburg. Sam allegedly drove away from officers after they approached a stolen Saturn SUV he was seen driving with expired North Carolina license plates and without working headlights about 4:30 a.m., a police spokesman said.

Numerous officers responded to a police radio report of the Saturn being driven away; eventually a detective sergeant who was in the area on a missing persons case saw two people walking together who appeared to fit the suspects' description, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. Additional cops handcuffed one man as the sergeant and other officers pursued Sam to 255 Havemeyer St., Browne said.

At one point, Sam tripped over a low-slung strand of chain and, after he fell, fired at officers with his handgun, missing them, police said. The sergeant and another officer, both from Long Island, returned fire and hit Sam a number of times in the torso, Browne said. The man Sam was with was freed by police so they could join in the pursuit, Browne said.

Sam had a total of nine wounds to his body, although it couldn't be determined if he was struck by nine rounds from the NYPD officers' guns. The 48-year-old sergeant has been on the force 24 years and was involved in a 1992 shooting in which he and fellow officers were in a shootout with five suspects in Queens, Browne said. No one was hit that time, he said. The 36-year-old police officer, a 10-year veteran, was in a previous shooting incident in which he shot a dog on the roof of an apartment building, Browne said.

Sam had an arrest on an assault charge in 2001 in Pennsylvania that resulted in a seven-year prison term there, Browne said.